Mexico. Five-time Gold Cup Champions.

The US men's team was absolutely demolished in the second half of a cup final this year, for the second time.

One soft penalty and the US team went to pieces. After Jay Heaps tugged at Giovanni Dos Santos' shirt, Gio went tumbling down into Heaps. The call was questionable, but the US team had plenty of chances in the first half to score and put the Mexicans on their heels.

But even worse was what happened after the penalty: the US looked like it was committing every man forward, leaving the inexperienced backline at the mercy of Dos Santos and Carlos Vela. The US lost discipline, shape, the match, and, eventually, dignity by a 5-0 scoreline. That's the kind of score we haven't seen in about 25 years.

Some fans will say that this doesn't mean anything. After all Coach Bob Bradley brought an inexperienced roster and decided to stick with them to see how they handled the pressure. And that's fair enough: there are lessons to be learned in defeat. And Bradley should be commended for sticking with his young team, when he could have brought in more experienced reinforcements.

But here's what should never happen: if you are a weaker, less talented, less experienced team, you must never be beaten on heart or organization. And this young US team was beaten on both accounts. Sure, they showed me more than enough in the first half of the game: this young team had the potential to beat this Mexico. If they played with the same discipline and marksmanship of US team's past, they would have put away one of their decent chances in the first half and known how to manage the result. It's fair to say that the US sometimes got lucky against Mexico during its near decade-long home unbeaten streak, but you'd also have to admit that the hard work those US team did made its own share of "luck". I saw none of that yesterday at Giant's Stadium.

Soccer's a funny game (as most sports are) with near overnight comebacks. But it will take more than a good US performance in Azteca on August 12 to convince me that Bob Bradley knows how to organize this team. For once, the US team has talent. How ironic, then, that its heart has seemed to fade away almost in tandem with the growth of the American's skill.

You're almost always wrong if...

You're almost always wrong if you write "If X doesn't happen, there's no way the US team can be successful at the next World Cup." (unless, of course, X is "score more goals than their opponents...)

This week's entry is Jamie Trecker's assertion that "It's been clear for some time that Adu needs to be a part of the 2010 effort for the USA to have a real chance."
Jamie's latest

So we're all clear on one thing: Freddy Adu can do things with the ball that no other US player can do. But the US had a good run in 2002 without anyone remotely resembling Adu. Not to mention the US's recent run in the Confederations Cup, in which Freddy didn't play a second...

So... no... Adu doesn't need to be part of the 2010 effort for the US to have a chance.

But here's hoping that Adu gets more playing time in the Gold Cup and shows that he can play against tighter defenses. Just because the American path to success need not be trod solely behind Adu's little footprints doesn't mean the team can't use him.

It's an OUTRAGE that Torres/Adu/Whoever Didn't Play Because They Were Out of Form!

The anger starts from somewhere deep within.

Some fans of the US men's soccer team are outraged when Coach Bob Bradley keeps talents like Freddy Adu on the bench, obstensibly because Freddy's "out of form," yet still has the audacity to play Sacha Kljestan, who is also "out of form." These fans ask: "Why can Bradley play Altidore, who also hasn't played for his club team, and then sit Adu BECAUSE he's not playing for his club team? It just doesn't make sense!"

Of course it does.

Part of the problem is that we don't always mean the same thing when we say a player is "out of form." It could be the player is injured. It could be the player simply hasn't seem much action. Or maybe the player is just not performing. Sometimes, it's all of the above (consider poor DaMarcus Beasley).

But a bigger part of the problem is that different players will react... wait for it... differently to being out of form.

Remember John O'Brien? One of the US's most talented midfielders, he was also always one wrong foot away from an ambulance. As a result of his many injuries, he didn't always see much time with his club team. But if he was healthy, you had to play him. He was that good: he got healthy just in time for the 2002 World Cup and put in a great tournament.

Similarly, Jozy Altidore played a decent Confederations Cup, despite not playing a minute for his second division club in Spain. Granted, he looked gassed at times later in matches. He likely would have been even better if he was getting serious playing time in Spain. But you could count on him to play his way into form.

Coach Bradley decided that guys like Adu couldn't play their way into shape but bet that Klejstan could. He clearly made a mistake with Beasley, who had taken advantage of past experiences with the national team to regain his form. But overall, I'm inclined to give some deference to the coach: he sees what's going on in practice. If he decides that Jose Francisco Torres is too tired to play, then he's making the decision based on information that you and I don't have.

So what's the bottom line? It doens't make sense to expect Bradley to be "consistent" in his decisions about playing guys who are out of form. Consistency for consistency's sake is almost worthless: all we really care about is who performs. We can criticize Bradley for not recognizing the depth of Beasley's problems and wonder what else he got wrong, but criticizing him for his inconsistency doesn't make any sense.